Parking Spaces into Parks

Parking Spaces into Parks

From Curbed LA:

Parklets (mini parks built in street parking spots, as seen every year on Park[ing] Day) are already in place in Long Beach and on their way in Los Angeles, so parklet fans are gearing up to make sure they are here to stay. Recently, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Complete Streets Initiative released a tool kit for designing and creating parklets. The tool kit compiles insights from already completed parklet projects in Long Beach, San Francisco, New York City, and more, in addition to coming up with some ideas for future parklets around Los Angeles (e.g., “Skid Row Revitalization Parklet,”“LA’s Diagonal Parklet,” and “Street Vending Parklet”). See all seven of those new ideas above.

The blog for architecture firm Studio One Eleven blog (they created some of the Long Beach parklets) says the tool kit “features parklet case studies and designs from around the world,” in addition to “providing all the necessary ‘tools’ to encourage users to adapt a program to their own communities.”

This is the first in a three-phase project–later phases will study the impacts of parklets on pedestrian traffic and business volume and the design and implementation of a parklet on Spring Street across from LA Café in Downtown LA. That parklet will join another parklet on Spring Street, one on Huntington Drive in El Sereno, and another on York Boulevard in Highland Park. Los Angeles’s planned parklets are pilot projects, so their success will determine the future of parklets in other neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

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